The author of Grasshopper Jungle and 100 Sideways Miles delivers yet another cutting-edge novel.
Fourteen-year-old Ariel hid from rebel soldiers inside a walk-in fridge and emerged the sole survivor in a small town in an unnamed country poisoned by gas. A year later, Ariel lives in West Virginia with his adoptive American parents and brother. The father, an inventor, works for the Merrie-Seymour Research Group, which focuses on "savings things from nonexistence." One of its products is the family pet, Alex, a bionic crow reincarnated from its centuries-old extinction who is "overwhelmingly disappointed by his existence." (Depression is a side effect for revived animals.) While outlandish, Smith makes this speculative element feel grounded, and sets up future events with a sure hand. The second narrator, Leonard, often referred to as "the melting man," is taking a huge bomb, assembled in a U-Haul, to destroy the Beaver King because Stalin's voice in his head told him to do so. This narrative can be suffocating, appropriately because of Leonard's anxious and suspicious imagination, but it's not nearly as smothering as the third narrative voice, unveiled through the diaries of an Arctic explorer whose ship, the Alex Crow, has been frozen for five months on an 1879 voyage to absolute north.
Readers must reach the end of the story to understand and appreciate fully the magnificence of Smith's interconnected narratives. The author sweeps up readers in a story filled with memorable characters and scenes, laugh-out-loud jokes and plenty of genre-defying strangeness for those who think they've seen it all. --Adam Silvera, children's bookseller